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Here is my response to the Leatherati Post on defending Racism for pay

This post is in respone to the post on the Leatherati post defending the Portland Eagle Racism for pay show. http://www.leatherati.com/leatherati_issues/2013/02/by-tyesha-best-leatherati-contributing-editor-recently-the-eagle-in-portland-or-had-scheduled-shirley-q-liquor-a-very-cont.html
This response is nothing more than a refusal to accept that not only was the act racist, but the failed attempt to justify the fact that many folks of different racial markers called it out. Blackface is racist PERIOD!What is more disheartening is the racist justification that followed the out cry. The erasure of those calling it racist by changing the topic to other comedy or queer issues is a tool of white guilt to move the conversation away from racism. We as white folks must learn to be uncomfortable that the world does not have a universal history.We as White folks must also realize that we are White and racism is not over there, it is within us. I benefit from racism not because I seek to but because I have both white skin privilege and masculine privilege. I work on my racism and internal bias everyday. But I digress, racism has material consequences for those who are POC, especially TBGLQ folks of colour, they are 80-90% of the prison population in the US, and there is a epidemic of Black and Brown transwomen being killed everyday. SO yes as Cornel West states RACE DOES MATTER in the material consequences. When was the last time you as a white person walked into a bar and was the only or one of a few person that were white? Well bars and spaces are often white spaces in the TBGLQ which in and of itself is unwelcoming to POC. And please do not throw out the “we” are all the same, “we” live in a “post-racial world” post-racial is a white term for white people to feel like we have moved beyond racism, well we have not.Finally, there is no such thing as reverse racism, bias based on gender,class, nation, sexual orientation sucks, but being white places all of those things into a privileged position, racism is about power, the power to name for others what is or is not. I stand in my whiteness neither in shame or guilt, but I am responsible to work on how my whiteness impacts the world I live in. I inherited this privilege not by my individual acts, but by the slavery and genocide that white supremacy demanded and extracted through structural and institutional practices. Again, Racism is a fact of life, how we response to it is very telling, the Eagle and those who supported the racist act, failed and no amount of justification will change that. Acting in a racist way often is not seen as intentional, but that is the lie, it is exactly its intention to hide itself from the individual preforming the act.

5 thoughts on “Here is my response to the Leatherati Post on defending Racism for pay”

Yes, thank you so much for calling this what it is– a poor attempt to dress-up a racist act in the rainbow flag of “free speech/expression!” .It is so sad that the Queer community is still debating whether black face is an act of racism, while any use of a pejorative reference to a gay male (i.e faggot) is almost an automatically unequivocal act of gay bashing!